New reputation system starts this month

One of the more interesting things that Microsoft talked about with the introduction of the Xbox One was the fact that they were going to introduce a new “Reputation System” as part of the Xbox One enhancements to Xbox Live. Starting this month, Microsoft will start issuing reputation warning to those who’s online behavior lacks a good reputation.

Everyone has had the problem with online players who were too this or too that or those who had behavior that was just over the top and despite the fact that you reported it on the Xbox 360, nothing really happened in all but the most extreme cases and normally only if someone from Microsoft witnessed the behavior.

Now with the new reputation system for Xbox One, Microsoft will issue warnings and these warnings can lead to regular offenders to lose access to “certain privileges”. It is still a bit undefined what privileges you could lose, but for example, you might lose the ability to use the Twitch broadcasting feature for example.

By the same token, players that are not disruptive and have good behavior will be rewarded as well. All of this is driven by the feedback that players receive and that is feed into an Xbox Live algorithm that is able to identify disruptive players and weed out the those complains that are a result of poor sportsmanship for example.

Your reputation fits into one of three possible ratings: “Good Players”, “Needs Work”, and “Avoid Me”. A green, yellow, and red style of rating, if you will. It makes things easy to understand and the fact that there will be consequences for your online actions could prove to help clean up the poor behavior that makes so many people not want to play online any longer. It also could prove to be an interesting feature that sets Xbox Line apart from other online services for other consoles by the fact that Microsoft is policing the service. The question is if this is something that the majority of players really want. For us at this point I think we would be willing to try about anything to improve the situation.